How do you follow perfection? By getting it right again, and to the exact
millimetre. Seventeen millimetres, to be precise – the length to which Pep
Guardiola ordered every blade of grass was cut on the pitches at Bayern
Munich’s Allianz Arena and their Sabener Strasse training ground after he
took over as the club’s head coach.

He wanted water, too. And a lot of it. Those immaculate pitches are drenched every day so the ball runs faster. Such attention to detail is symptomatic of Guardiola’s obsessive belief that his players prepare and play with geometric precision.

Take their conditioning. Guardiola brought fitness coach Lorenzo Buenaventura with him from Barcelona and, at Bayern’s training camp in Arca, Italy, over the summer they used a variety of innovative approaches from rugby and tennis to improve the players’ fitness. Goalkeeper Manuel Neuer was tied to a goalpost by a piece of elastic to increase his spring and reach.

Such an approach is not novel – Fabio Capello takes a ruler with him to check the pitches, Jose Mourinho’s most trusted lieutenant is fitness coach Rui Faria and Andre Villas-Boas is similarly fastidious but arguably none of those managers are facing greater demands than Guardiola.

This is the man, after all, whose new side are the holders of the Champions League and won a league and cup double last season under Jupp Heynckes.

“It is very difficult at this moment to improve with Bayern because they won the last three competitions but he will find a way because he is a very good manager,” said Manchester City manager Manuel Pellegrini, ahead of the Champions League tie between the sides on Wednesday. “He knows the way we play so he will try different things. But we know things about Guardiola, too. I lived in Spain nine years so I know exactly the way Guardiola plays.”

Bayern are starting to feel like Guardiola’s side. Personnel changes may have been minimal but bold alterations have been made to the style of play. Possession, possession and possession is the mantra.

This revolution might have been undertaken at the Etihad Stadium itself. City were one of many clubs Guardiola decided against joining following his departure from Barcelona, despite the presence of so many former Nou Camp executives at the club.

Last May, long after Guardiola had confirmed he was joining Bayern, City’s chief executive Ferran Soriano sat in a suite on the top floor of New York’s luxurious Trump Hotel and suggested that the club had not given up the hunt to eventually appoint him.

“Pep is very young,” Soriano said. “After Germany he will probably come to England to coach somewhere. With Pep, the conversation is not about us chasing him or him chasing us. Pep and Txiki [Begiristain, City’s director of football] speak regularly, maybe weekly, so that would have been an easy one.”

Not that Pellegrini should be unnerved. Guardiola might fit the profile of the kind of ‘holistic’ manager they want but so does Pellegrini, who also demands possession-based dominance and attacking football. However, with Soriano talking about coaches working in “cycles” of three or four years, it is easy to project what might happen when Guardiola’s contract ends in 2016, even if Chelsea might also have a say in that.

All eyes will be on Guardiola in midweek. Just as they were in Prague when he beat Mourinho to win the Super Cup and help assuage absurdly early concerns that his appointment might have been a huge mistake.

These fears crystallised in a strong comment piece in the broadsheet newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung that attacked the “shameless financial sleaze” of Guardiola’s £18 million signing of Barcelona midfielder Thiago Alcântara — represented by the manager’s brother, Pere, who is also Luis Suárez’s agent — and criticised the public dispute with his former assistant, and successor at Barca, Tito Vilanova.

The Alcantara jibe was not without foundation — such links are potentially awkward and Bayern were sufficiently compromised that they could not bid for Suárez during the transfer window — but on the pitch Guardiola is starting to have a profound effect.

Like Mourinho, Guardiola prefers a small, compact squad and players who are “multifunctional”. He also likes to innovate, moving defender Philipp Lahm to become his holding midfielder.

Nothing is a given for Guardiola and he should not be hired unless a club is ready to embrace change. As a disciple of Johann Cruyff, when Guardiola was appointed Barca’s coach he urged fans to “fasten your seat belts. You’re going to have fun”.

His approach at Bayern is the same. Ten goals in the past four matches in an unbeaten start to the season suggest this machine is hitting the mark. To the final millimetre.